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Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Elderly cousins undergo joint euthanasia for fear of being separated

By Lyndsey Telford
The Telegraph
Originally posted February 1, 2015

Two elderly Scottish cousins who relied on each other to get by have undergone joint euthanasia because they feared being put in separate care homes.

Stuart Henderson, 86, and Phyllis McConachie, 89, took their lives together in a Swiss clinic in November last year. Neither was terminally ill.

The pair had lived together for 40 years and managed to look after each other in a sheltered housing complex.

But, with Ms McConachie having injured her hip in a fall and with Mr Henderson’s onset dementia, the cousins worried they would be sent to different homes and separated.

Their joint deaths have sparked outrage among anti-euthanasia campaigners, who have described their case as “the ultimate abandonment” due to a lack of patient-centred care in the UK.

The entire article is here.